topic Re: Can deleting marketing contacts keep you from going over your contact tier? in Tips, Tricks & Best Practices

Can deleting marketing contacts keep you from going over your contact tier?

fay_fay — Sun, 01 Oct 2023 05:28:16 GMT

Hello -

I need to do something to make sure we don't go over our contact tier and into the next billing tier and we are very close - 98%!

I read this article: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/account/understand-marketing-contacts-billing

Which says:

"Deleting a marketing contact will free up capacity for other contacts to be set as marketing. It will not automatically reduce your contact tier."

I believe this part means that if I DELETE marketing contacts during a billing cycle, I can back-fill those deleted contacts with new marketing contacts and thus, prevent my account from going over the contact tier. Can anybody here verify this?

Re: Can deleting marketing contacts keep you from going over your contact tier?

fay_fay — Sun, 01 Oct 2023 05:40:16 GMT

Not for clarification - I am not looking to go DOWN a contacct tier - I just don't want to go up! I THINK I should be able to prevent this by deleting marketing contacts, looking for verification. Thank you!

Re: Can deleting marketing contacts keep you from going over your contact tier?

EmmaAtKiwi — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 00:05:09 GMT

Hi @fay_fay! You CAN delete marketing contacts, but you can also set them up to automatically remove the marketing status when a contact doesn't meet your email requirements anymore, like unsubscribing, bouncing, being unengaged, not your ideal customer profile, in geographies you don't service, etc.

HOWEVER, the number of marketing contacts will ONLY adjust on the first of every month! From now until November 1, make sure you're not automatically giving marketing contact status to all the new contacts coming into your HubSpot. Check your forms (both HubSpot and external) and integrations - they could be giving each new contact the status.

Here's some more information on auto-removing the status.

Re: Can deleting marketing contacts keep you from going over your contact tier?

fay_fay — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 15:59:38 GMT

Hi Emma! Thanks for the reply and the helpful video. I am definitely going to implement workflows to manage marketing contacts! I learned something important on this front that I wanted to share as well.

I was trying to interpret the part of the legal language that says:

"Deleting a marketing contact will free up capacity for other contacts to be set as marketing. It will not automatically reduce your contact tier."

So I did delete several thousand marketing contacts that were "bad" (per your definition), and I am happy to report that the tactic worked! It took a day for Hubspot to process, but I am now well below my marketing contacts limit and don't need to be quite as stressed!

Re: Can deleting marketing contacts keep you from going over your contact tier?

EmmaAtKiwi — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 16:23:14 GMT

@fay_fay EXCELLENT! I'm glad it worked for you. Marketing contacts can sneak up on you and create a big headache.

Re: Can deleting marketing contacts keep you from going over your contact tier?

monicamacd1 — Mon, 03 Jun 2024 23:54:39 GMT

If this is true then this is a crazy way for Hubspot to make money. Marketo allows you to delete records at any time then adjusts the numbers immediately so that you can maintain your database threshold. Any marketing contacts that you delete should automatically be removed from your marketing contacts database. Both SFDC and Marketo work this way.

Re: Can deleting marketing contacts keep you from going over your contact tier?

EmmaAtKiwi — Tue, 04 Jun 2024 13:04:44 GMT

Agree, it's a total bummer